EU Court Tells ISPs They Don't Have To Hand Over Downloader Names

from the privacy-and-such dept

We were just noting how Europe seemed to recognize that having ISPs simply hand over the IP addresses of individuals could be a violation of privacy, and along comes the EU's top court to confirm that stance. The European Court of Justice has come down with a decision stating that entertainment industry companies cannot force ISPs to hand over IP addresses, though local governments could put in place rules that would compel them to do so. It seems rather interesting that just as the entertainment industry is pushing for increased ISP liability, the courts are recognizing the sorts of privacy issues this raises. It makes you wonder how the courts will feel when the entertainment industry tells ISPs they need to monitor every file transferred to make sure it contains no unauthorized material.

This is really dumb. Neither the government (of the US, dunno about anywhere else) or ISPs have a responsibility to help you retain ownership of your property.

If I steal a car, bring it to my rental property to store it, and then sell or give away the stolen property, can the owner of the vehicle sure my landlord for not monitering the rental property 24/7 and making sure that the vehicle I brought home was mine and that ther person taking it was authorized by the owner of the stolen property to do so? I don't think so... Just thinking about that scenario makes my head hurt.

In America, your rights are only honoured in the breach. This means that you cannot make the gov't or an ISP try to protect your property for you, much less do it free of charge. Dumbasses.

Believe me Rose M Welch the EU protect their citzens identities much more thoroughly than America.

I don't want to go into enlightening you about the nitty gritty but Microsoft might be an example of how money not privacy matter to the Europeans.

I am an African living in Europe with family in America and I can tell you one thing about the word security is not worth the paper its written unless you matter to certain minority of American population.

In Europe they think for the masses not the minority with no delusional American Dream.